Thieving a Theme

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Writers tend to portray important objects/events as banal ones and the banal ones as something out of this world. This is a sort of their obsession, just a technique to tell something differently, to take recourse to sensationalism, or at least to remedy their own boredom. It is their cleverness—well, we may call it so. In their effort to import newness to their writing, they do not care a damn about making a god steal, an ignoramus possess the divine wisdom, a weakling defy death and so forth. Lord Krishna used to steal butter from the milkmaids; he used to try out his pranks by pelting stones at the earthen pot on the head of the milkmaids. How beautiful is the poem of the devotional poet Surdas—maiya mere mein nahin makhan khayo! (मैया मेरी मै नहीं माखन खायो) This Bhajan of Anup Jalota is my all-time favourite. In my native district there is a temple named Khirachora Gopinath which means lord Krishna that stole the sweetened milk. And the legend has it that Lord Krishna, the presiding deity of the temple once hid a bowl of sweetened milk out of those offered to him so that he could pass it on to a devotee sleeping unfed in the town. Stealing an object out of the ones offered to you? Illogical: yet let’s admit there is something called the poetic licence!

Readers since time immemorial have liked stories of Robin Hood who used loot and then distribute the loot among the needy. Perugia stole Mona Lisa and a great mass of literature was churned out on the event, so much so the thief was hailed as a great Italian patriot! Our illustrious freedom fighters had looted treasuries of British India and the daring exploits of our heroes have been extolled in the literature. The great Oriya short story “Shikar” of Bhagawati Panigrahi that later became a film named “Mrigaya” and won national awards can be taken as an example.

So, when big people act small or the small ones the big, it becomes literature. Just a few days ago, I read a beautiful sentence in the newspaper that attributed it to a judge of the Spreme Court of India: There is no saint without a past and no sinner without a future. [Justice Katju on Sunny Leone]  

I know it is painful in real life, yet it can be a piece of funny literature to describe the pranks of our rogue elephants going into the kitchen and stealing rice and sugar. Even pachyderms are fond of alcohol! I don’t know if anyone of us is really writing on this. There is no tiger in our forests these days and so tiger stories would not come to our pen so easily. Really, how lucky was Jim Corbett to have lived in the cusp between nineteenth and twentieth century when there were tigers in Kumaon! Similarly, a monkey stealing a pair of specs and a mobile phone from the hostel should supply interesting materials to develop into stories. One can even make these animals speak and act like human beings, say like a boy-elephant chasing an elephant girl for love or defeating his competitors in antakshari.

Some fifteen years ago or so, it was discovered in a certain community development block of Orissa that the numbers of wells dug as per the records of the Block Development Officer was substantially more than what was physically found. So an FIR was lodged that wells have been stolen. Can wells be stolen? Even poetic license would not allow such a fantasy. Poets can go to the extent of stealing a glance or stealing sleep or, at best, stealing somebody’s heart! And not more than that. Corruption has more power than poetry: only the manner of utilization differs.

And even I know (or rather I can produce the victim) of a person whose blood was stolen. He was donating blood and it was agreed that only one bottle of blood would be taken. But when the second was taken and then the third one was inserted, the fellow protested. And the rest I have forgotten. And if I have to imagine what had happened then, let me say the victim was compensated with an offer of two ripe bananas. That is that.

A thief’s confession could be a great story, but how to meet one? At least on two occasions people have proposed to share their private stories with their request to fictionalize them, but ultimately they have restrained themselves. Really, I had expected from them something authentic and romantic, but their gestures were only too tentative. Then I felt cheated…and that is that. 

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By

A. N. Nanda

12-01-2012

Coimbatore

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